Understanding sentiments and discourse surrounding the Make America Healthy Again (#MAHA) movement on social media with pre-trained language models

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement highlights the complexity of public perceptions surrounding policies rooted in populist health initiatives in the United States. While supporters embrace the movement’s messaging around healthier lifestyles and nutritional choices, critics point to its political undertones and the widespread misinformation associated with it. To better understand the dynamics of public perceptions of the MAHA movement, our study leverages sentiment classification and topic modeling to analyze discourse about the movement on X. Our analysis reveals an interesting trend: although the movement initially generated overwhelmingly positive sentiment, overall positivity declined following the nomination and subsequent confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services to the point where negative sentiment began to outweigh positive sentiments. Further integration of such trends with topic modeling analysis suggests that while the public initially supported the ideals of healthier lifestyles promoted by the MAHA movement, enthusiasm diminished and eventually turned negative once the movement became entangled with political dimensions and controversial policies.